


Comfort Me

by Tammany



Category: Good Omens
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Gen, M/M, Wing Fic., Wing Grooming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-06-30 14:08:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19854805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: I have been enjoying a number of wing fics. This one is...different.A hat-tip to Madeleine L'Engle and her cherubim Proginoskes.





	Comfort Me

The first thousand years Aziraphale didn’t even think to wonder. He had worked out an unhappy but acceptable way of dealing with preening and molting. It meant putting up with one of the cheekier cherubs, Proginoskes, a youngster in the eyes of most of heaven. Proginoskes, like all cherubim, was over-blessed with wings, and smoke, and eyes. Grooming the attitudinal cherub—or cherubim, as he preferred to be called, feeling himself fully entitled to identify himself as a multitude on wing-count alone—gave Aziraphale vivid insight into what it might be like raising a human teenager. But in return the youngster was willing to do a fair job of helping Aziraphale sort the bits he couldn’t easily tend to himself. And to Proginoskes’ credit, he was a good angel at heart. Kinder than he realized, with a zeal for goodness that humbled Aziraphale.

Proginoskes would not have given away his flaming sword, Aziraphale suspected. Proginoskes would not have the kind of troublesome doubts Aziraphale harbored regarding God, Goodness, the various plans—written and ineffable—and most of all about Heaven’s goodness. Proginoskes would not struggle with faith.

Proginoskes would settle Aziraphale on an asteroid with a perfect view of the Crab Nebula from above. He would radiate a warm, blessed light. Then, as he gently, patiently preened and plucked and soothed Aziraphale’s feathers, he would sing. Aziraphale would close his eyes and bask in the splendor—the glory of God’s handiwork, from the grandeur of the universe itself to the smallest singing atom, all part of God’s choir, all part of God’s ineffable plan. Aziraphale would feel himself firmly settled, with his own place in the wonder of it all.

He was settled. For many years the demon was barely an acquaintance, though one he had quickly come to look forward to. It wasn’t so strange he didn’t think to wonder about how the demon got on with it. Yes, he had seen the beautiful jet wings. But he’d just assumed without much thought that the demon would have an arrangement similar to his own: some demon in Hell willing to help with the grooming necessary to keep wings beautiful. No doubt it was a mixed pleasure, probably a bit less joyful than his arrangement with Proginoskes. After all, it was Hell, not Heaven. But on the whole he gave it no more thought than he gave Crawly’s robes, or hair brush, sandal straps.

Towards the end of the first millennium he did pause and wonder a bit who the demon would find in Hell to help him out. Many demons had no wings, not even in their most demonic forms. Others had bat wings, or even dragon’s wings, which needed no preening and which never molted. Who tended to Crawly’s wings?

Someone did, of course. When the two met, as often as not there were at least a few moments when they presented in full angelic and demonic display. After all, in those days they were messengers. Their wings were their calling cards. Angel and demon alike were well-trained to trigger lasting trauma in their viewers, justifying a few shouts of “Fear Not!” Or, in the case of demons, “Fear Greatly!” So Aziraphale saw and admired the sheen on Crawly’s feathers and the well-cared-for perfection of his wings.

Every time he saw them he heard in his mind the verses from what would, in the mortal realm, come to be called “The Song of Solomon.”  
  
_I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon._

_Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother's children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept._

The words of a scorned man, a man outcast by his own, and, yet—comely. Beautiful. The demon’s wings were as beautiful as Aziraphale’s own. If Aziraphale were honest, he’d say that he found those glittering, elegant obsidian wings even more beautiful than his own. He had little interest or pleasure in his own golden-white beauty, or his own snowy wings.

Crawly had dark fascination going for him, from his cherry-black tresses and his vivid serpent eyes to his perfect wings. Who helped tend those wings, in Hell? Lucky demon, whoever it was.

Aziraphale enjoyed the laborious effort he put into helping Proginoskes with his many, many wings. Yes, it involved a certain miraculous handling of time to deal with so many. But the cherubim’s wings were beautiful, his eyes glorious, and there was a certain comfort in spending the time answering a very young angel’s questions and trying to teach it--them?--humility and grace. He would spend extra time carding through the bunched feathers in the “kitchen” of Proginoskes' wings, where the smallest covert feathers met the non-feathery body. It was intimate and loving, as close as an angel was ever likely to come to parenthood—like mother and daughter, together in the thin light of morning. A mother braiding her daughter’s hair.  
  
Who tended Crawly so?

  
Aziraphale didn’t know, and in all honesty cared only slightly. It was done—that was evident. His demon associate was too well-kept for it to be otherwise.

It was in the third millennium, when so much that had once been written only in God’s eternal library came to be properly written in human time, that Aziraphale first offered to help the demon groom himself. It was a fluke. An accident. The two had weathered Noah’s storm together—forty days and forty nights, complete with constant rain and high winds, and never a place to land but the ridge-pole of the roof of the Ark. Then the ravens sent out, and then, at last, the doves.

And then the Ark coming to rest on Mt. Ararat, and the sun pelting down, and the “Rain Bow.”

The land stank—of cast up sea things, and drowned land things. The Ark, too, stank—of all God’s creatures and all their fecal waste. It was hardly a glorious second start, Rain Bow or no. Between them, unsaid, Crawly’s earlier comment echoed, sardonic.

“How _kind._ ”

No. Not very. Not when you thought about it.

It upset Aziraphale that there was so much of God’s will that didn’t bear much thinking about.

He glanced at his demonic companion. The demon hunched, damp and disheveled, steaming slightly in the Mediterranean heat. His woolen robes smelled of lanolin. His fingers were puckered and the white of dead fish bellies. (And they had seen more than enough fish bellies over the forty days and nights, as fresh water fish died in saline water, and sea fish died in the diluted run-off from the land.)

He looked miserable. Without even thinking, Aziraphale clucked, and said, “My dear boy, you’re in a terrible state! Here—turn around. Let me help.” And without further comment he reached out, turned the demon around, and with a gentle touch pressed his wings wide. “Goodness, lad! What a sight! I’ll do you, then you can do me, and we’ll both feel the better for it.”

He’d spent hours on Crawly’s wings, slicking rainwater from each vaned feather, working preen oil through, smoothing and tidying, sinking his fingers deep to gently scratch and scrape, easing the itch that settled into an angel’s wings after too long unattended. He tidied the thick pad of contour feathers that lay between the two wings, between the shoulder blades of the human body. Then, without a word, he combed and cleaned and oiled the cherry-black locks, and sorted them into Etruscan-style braids. He’d chattered when he did, talking about his care of Proginoskes, about closing his eyes on the asteroid and listening to the singing. Talking about what it felt like trying to succor such a young spirit. Just—talking.

Through it all, Crawly said nothing, beyond the occasional soft gasp at an itch chased into oblivion, or creel when a broken feather had to be dealt with—the quill trimmed carefully down, to remain in place until it shed naturally. When Aziraphale was done, Crawly muttered some incoherent thanks, then, without meeting the angel’s eyes, had turned Aziraphale around and returned the kindness. He said nothing…but…

He sang. There on the roof-pole of the Ark, the demon sang. His voice wasn’t solo-material, but it was sweeter than his crow-black wings might have suggested. He sang a hymn of Ishtar.

Some people worshipped God by that name, but the Chosen Ones scorned that Goddess and classified her as a demon. It was…confusing. Much of how mortals processed the ineffable one was confusing. But Crawly sang her hymns.

 _She is clothed in pleasure and love._  
_She is laden with vitality, charm, and voluptuousness._  
_Ishtar is clothed in pleasure and love._  
_She is laden with vitality, charm, and voluptuousness._

 _In lips she is sweet; life is in her mouth._  
_At her appearance rejoicing becomes full._  
_She is glorious; veils are thrown over her head._  
_Her figure is beautiful; her eyes are brilliant._

The hymn was long. When it was done, the demon moved on to others. Aziraphale, eyes closed, felt the brilliant sun bleed through his eye lids. He felt his wings slowly dry. He sighed in pleasure as slim, strong fingers eased the tension from every inch of skin and bone and tendon. Proginoskes tried, but he was a young thing, and he didn’t understand how being groomed eased an abiding ache in an angel’s very soul.

When the demon finished, he ran his fingers delicately through Aziraphale’s curls. “Like spun gold,” he whispered. Then he placed a kiss—a kiss!—at the nape of Aziraphale’s neck. And then he was done, turned away, already pointing to the tip of nearby hills beginning to rise from the surface of the waters.

“Who helps groom you at home,” Aziraphale asked.

The demon shrugged. “Whoever.”

He offered nothing more, and his voice made it clear Aziraphale should not ask again.

The angel’s heart ached for him—it was the first deep compassion he felt for Crawly. The first sense he truly had of what it might be to be among the Fallen, while lacking a Fallen heart.

That was a possibility he still could not express to himself. That a demon might, in fact, still somehow be…nice. Good. That a demon might still have an angel soul.

It was years before they groomed together again. The 14th Century, in Germany. Outside a plague town. The last few hundred remained unburied, attracting flies.

Angel and demon had labored hard in the streets of that town, but seldom spoken to each other. The dead children stood, accusing, between them, and whether your loyalty was to Heaven or to Hell there could be no answer for the dead. It was brutal, and eternal, and no comfort was to be found for either messenger. Later Aziraphale would wonder if anyone had been saved or damned from that horror.

On the dawn after the final death—a six month old baby who died not of illness, but who starved in its cradle, its mother having died days before—they met in the town square.

“I stink,” Crawly—no, Crowley, now—snarled.

“Me, too,” Aziraphale conceded.

Crowley’s fists shot up, toward the cold and rook-delighting heaven. Moments later a bevy of Japanese peasants ran screaming from a bathhouse on the foothills of Mt. Fuji, when two terrifying demons materialized naked in the building.

Aziraphale didn’t even scold the demon. Instead he silently filled a bamboo ladle and started to wash the demon clean. He accepted the demon’s return kindness. They went and soaked, hours and hours and hours, together in a hot-tub kept hot as much by miracle as by charcoal. They finished and sterilized the little room, then went to crouch on stones by a running stream, where they groomed each other’s feathers gently. Aziraphale let his spirit ease up against the demon’s, comforted that his inner grace was so little different from any angel's, barring a faint suggestion of barbecue smoke and sulfur.

It was the first time he thought that one might, under the right circumstances, love a demon. Blend spirit with a demon. Not him. Not Crowley. But some angel, and some demon, in some alternate reality. In the meantime—he was an angel. If on the one hand he was meant to battle evil, on the other he was meant to know love and compassion for all God’s creation, including the lost and the Fallen.

They huddled together all night, listening to the music of the stars themselves, and the song of the stream rushing beside them. In the morning they woke, and stretched, and smiled oddly at each other, and went their separate ways.

In the nineteenth century, just once, Aziraphale saw Crowley preening himself. Alone. He was limber and flexible, and he stretched to reach every last feather. Aziraphale had seen contortionists with less agility. The demon was coming away from the Trail of Tears, and the contaminated blankets.

His face was dark, and he radiated rage.

Aziraphale considered going to him—and thought better of it. He dared not cross that burning fury.

In the days after the Apocalapse, when they had eaten the last bite of their meal at the Ritz, and drunk the last toast, Aziraphale said, gently, “Come back to mine. Your feathers must be all crimped after the last few days.”

Crowley glanced at him. “Pretty intimate, angel. Sure you want to go there?”

“It’s nowhere I haven’t been before.”

“That’s what you think.” Crowley’s voice promised something epochal.

“Will you sing?”

Crowley’s eyes burned gold over the frame of his glasses. “Hymns to Ishtar, who is good.”

“They used to call God that, once,” Aziraphale said.

“I know,” Crowley answered. “Some things are complicated.”

Aziraphale nodded. “Like us.”

“Oi. Don’t go soft on me, angel,” the demon snapped, in a voice that said, instead, “Go soft, angel. Please, go soft…”

Together in Aziraphale’s upstairs rooms, they groomed each other’s wings. Crowley sang songs of Ishtar. Aziraphale sang the Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s. 

_Like an apricot tree among the trees of the forest_   
_is my beloved among the young men._   
_I delight to sit in his shade,_   
_and his fruit is sweet to my taste._   
_He has brought me to the house of wine,_   
_and his banner over me is love._

_Sustain me with raisins;_   
_refresh me with apples,_   
_for I am faint with love._

As they preened and groomed, they allowed their spirits to twine…angel lovemaking, as intense as any sex might ever be.

And in Heaven’s Heaven, in God’s Sanctum of Sanctums, the Creator listened to two of her choir sing the songs of love, and wondered why they all found her will so ineffable.


End file.
